NY Times Editorial Board to Obama Admin: Let Snowden Come Home
The New York Times editorial board, fresh from meeting secretly to endorse Hillary Clinton, called for the Obama administration to allow NSA leaker Edward Snowden to come home from exile in Russia and face reduced punishment for his revelations of the National Security Agency’s expansive surveillance operations.
In a post entitled “Edward Snowden, Whistle-blower”—the appellation alone is important, as many have deemed Snowden a traitor, while a fierce debate has raged over whether whistleblower is one word, two, or hyphenated—the Times editorial board argued that the scope of the revelations far outweighed the breach of trust Snowden committed to reveal it to the public, and recommended that the charges against him be moderated:
He may have committed a crime to do so, but he has done his country a great service. It is time for the United States to offer Mr. Snowden a plea bargain or some form of clemency that would allow him to return home, face at least substantially reduced punishment in light of his role as a whistle-blower, and have the hope of a life advocating for greater privacy and far stronger oversight of the runaway intelligence community.
The board also had little time for those who felt that Snowden had endangered national security by leaking classified information, and in fact sounded more upset over Director of National Intelligence James Clapper’s “least untruthful” statement to Congress about the agency’s activities than with Snowden’s actions revealing them:
The shrill brigade of his critics say Mr. Snowden has done profound damage to intelligence operations of the United States, but none has presented the slightest proof that his disclosures really hurt the nation’s security. Many of the mass-collection programs Mr. Snowden exposed would work just as well if they were reduced in scope and brought under strict outside oversight, as the presidential panel recommended.
Snowden is currently working in Russia, after his passport was revoked during a stop at Moscow’s Sheremetyevo Airport last summer, stranding him in the city.
[h/t NY Times]
[Image via AP]
